Former Triple J office manager faces up to 18 months in prison

FREMONT - An Elmore woman has been found guilty of bilking more than $30,000 from a local towing company.

Janet Sanderson is scheduled to be sentenced Aug. 27 after pleading no contest and being found guilty on three misdemeanor counts of theft for stealing more than $30,000 from Triple J Towing & Recovery while she worked as an office manager from 2013 to 2015.

The company discovered that $30,000 was missing after reviewing eight months' worth of records from Sanderson's two-year tenure at Triple J, 2115 Hayes Ave.

"It's devastating," Howard said. "We are still a long way away to fixing it."

Howard said that when he hired Sanderson, he was aware she had been found guilty of bilking H & R Block out of $128,000 in July 2009.

"She convinced me she didn't do it, and we hired her for work release so she could avoid jail time," Howard said. "That's what is really killing me."

As an office manager, Sanderson was responsible for money coming in and out of the offices, paying bills and filing sales taxes.

Tracey Thompson, a current office manager for Triple J, said Sanderson quit her job about two weeks after Thompson was hired.

"She was good," Thompson said. "She was manipulative. It was always a little bit here and a little bit there that she would take."

Thompson said she told Howard soon after she was hired that she suspected Sanderson was stealing money from the company.

"She and her husband both worked there, and she was giving him more money in his paycheck, and records just weren't right," Thompson said.

Because of the length of time involved in the thefts, Thompson said she has been able to recover only about eight months of records from 2015 detailing Sanderson's thefts.

"Before she left she was deleting files off the computer," Thomspon said. "Luckily we had backup."

Howard said it would be too costly for the company to try to track down and recover all the money stolen over the more than two years of Sanderson's employment.

"There was a time I was having to make payroll with my own personal credit card," Howard said. "The moment she left, I didn't have to make payroll with my card."

And the problems persist, he added, as he is still working to pay outstanding bills that should have been paid by Sanderson.

"After I confronted her, she filed three years of sales taxes in three days," Howard said. "She was trying to bankrupt me."

Although Sanderson could face up to six months in prison for each of her three theft counts, Howard is concerned that she may just get a slap on the wrist even after previously being convicted of embezzlement.